According to thePrimary Chronicle, he succeeded his "kinsman"Rurik as ruler ofNovgorod, and subdued many of the East Slavic tribes to his rule, extending his control from Novgorod to the south along theDnieper river. Oleg also launched a successfulattack onConstantinople. He died in 912 and was succeeded by Rurik's son,Igor.
This traditional dating has been challenged by some historians, who point out that it is inconsistent with such other sources as theSchechter Letter, which mentions the activities of a certainkhagan HLGW (Hebrew:הלגו usually transcribedHelgu. Compare Swedish first name Helge.) of Rus' as late as the 940s, during the reign of Byzantine EmperorRomanus I. The nature of Oleg's relationship with the Rurikid ruling family of the Rus', and specifically with his successorIgor of Kiev, is a matter of much controversy among historians.[13]
According to thePrimary Chronicle, Oleg was a "relative" or "kinsman" ofRurik,[14] and was entrusted by Rurik to take care of both his realm and his young son Igor. However, his relation to Rurik is debatable, and has been rejected by several modern scholars.[13] Oleg is narrated to have succeeded Rurik as the ruler of Novgorod in 879. In 881–882, he took control ofSmolensk, and then seized power inKiev by tricking and slayingAskold and Dir, and setting himself up as prince in Kiev, which is commonly taken as the founding ofKievan Rus'.[12] Although Oleg was the first "prince" (knyaz) of Kiev according to thePrimary Chronicle, he was not yet a "grand prince" (velikiy knyaz).[12] Whereas later Muscovite chroniclers would call Oleg a "grand prince" and Kiev a "grand principality" (Russian:великое княжение,romanised: velikoe knyazhenie), the earliest sources do not.[15]
In 883, Oleg made theDrevlians pay tribute to Kiev. In 907, the Drevlians took part in the Kievan military campaign against the Byzantine Empire: theRus'-Byzantine War (907) againstConstantinople in 907.[16]
Historian Vladimir Shikanov claims that Byzantium faced an attack by "raiders" who plundered the Thracian coast and wished to find honour in Constantinople, but were unable to, as the remaining fire-fighting ships under the command of Patrikios John Rodin defeated the Rus at Cape Tricephalus, and the treaty of 911 was a "gift" to the barbarians. making the course of the case more predictable. According to him, in the chronicle, the defeat was disguised as a great victory.[17] HistorianVladimir Pashuto, on the other hand, believes that the peace treaty was beneficial to Rus' in all respects, regardless of the analysis and timeline of the campaign.[18]
The brief account of Oleg's life in thePrimary Chronicle contrasts with the version given in theNovgorod First Chronicle, which states that Oleg was not related to Rurik, and was rather a Scandinavian client-prince who served as Igor's army commander. TheNovgorod First Chronicle does not give the date of the commencement of Oleg's reign, but dates his death to 922 rather than 912.[19]
Scholars have contrasted this dating scheme with the "epic" reigns of roughly thirty-three years for both Oleg and Igor in the Primary Chronicle.[20] ThePrimary Chronicle and other Kievan sources place Oleg's grave in Kiev, while Novgorodian sources identify a funerarybarrow inLadoga as Oleg's final resting place.[21]
In thePrimary Chronicle, Oleg is known as the Prophet, an epithet alluding to the sacred meaning of his Norse name ("priest"). According to the legend, romanticised byAlexander Pushkin in hisballad "The Song of the Wise Oleg",[22] it was prophesied by the pagan priests (volkhvs) that Oleg would take death from his stallion.[23]
To defy the prophecies, Oleg sent the horse away. Many years later he asked where his horse was, and was told it had died. He asked to see the remains and was taken to the place where the bones lay. When he touched the horse's skull with his boot a snake slithered from the skull and bit him. Oleg died, thus fulfilling the prophecy.[23]
Oleg's death has been interpreted as a distorted variant of thethreefold death theme inIndo-European myth and legend, with prophecy, the snake and the horse representing thethree functions: the prophecy is associated with sovereignty, the horse with warriors, and the serpent with reproduction.[24]
According to the Primary Chronicle, Oleg died in 912 and his successor,Igor of Kiev, ruled from then until his assassination in 945. TheSchechter Letter,[27] a document written by aJewishKhazar, a contemporary ofRomanus I Lecapenus, describes the activities of a Rus' warlord named HLGW (Hebrew:הלגו), usually transcribed as "Helgu".[28] For years many scholars disregarded or discounted theSchechter Letter account, which referred to Helgu (often interpreted as Oleg) as late as the 940s.[29]
Recently, however, scholars such asDavid Christian andConstantine Zuckerman have suggested that the Schechter Letter's account is corroborated by various other Rus' chronicles, and suggests a struggle within the early Rus' polity between factions loyal to Oleg and to theRurikidIgor, a struggle that Oleg ultimately lost.[30] Zuckerman posited that the early chronology of the Rus' had to be re-determined in light of these sources. Among Zuckerman's beliefs and those of others who have analysed these sources are that the Khazars did not loseKiev until the early 10th century (rather than 882, the traditional date),[31] that Igor was not Rurik's son but rather a more distant descendant, and that Oleg did not immediately followRurik, but rather that there is a lost generation between the legendaryVarangian lord and his documented successors.[32]
Of particular interest is the fact that the Schechter Letter account of Oleg's death (namely, that he fled to and raided FRS, tentatively identified with Persia,[33] and was slain there) bears remarkable parallels to the account of Arab historians such asIbn Miskawayh, who described a similarRus' attack on theMuslim state ofArran in the year 944/5.[34]
Prince Oleg Approached by Pagan Priests, aKholuy illustration to Pushkin's ballad.
In contrast to Zuckerman's version, thePrimary Chronicle and the laterKiev Chronicle place Oleg's grave in Kiev, where it could be seen at the time of the compilation of these documents. Furthermore, scholars have pointed out that if Oleg succeeded Rurik in 879 (as the East Slavic chronicles assert), he could hardly have been active almost 70 years later, unless he had a life-span otherwise unheard of in medieval annals. To solve these difficulties, Parkomenko (1924) proposed that the pagan monarch-priests of Rus' used the hereditary title ofhelgu, standing for "holy" in theNorse language, and that Igor and others held this title.[35]
It has also been suggested that Helgu-Oleg who waged war in the 940s was distinct from both of Rurik's successors. He could have been one of the "fair and great princes" recorded in the Russo-Byzantine treaties of 911 and 944 or one of the "archons of Rus" mentioned inDe administrando imperio.[36]
Georgy Vernadsky even identified the Oleg of the Schechter Letter with Igor's otherwise anonymous eldest son, whose widow Predslava is mentioned in the Russo-Byzantine treaty of 944.[37] Alternatively, V. Ya. Petrukhin speculated that Helgu-Oleg of the 940s was one of the vernacular princes ofChernigov, whose ruling dynasty maintained especially close contacts withKhazaria, as the findings at theBlack Grave, a large royalkurgan excavated near Chernigov, seem to testify.[38]
Prince Oleg appears as the primary villain inseason 6 ofVikings (2019–2020). In this production, Askold and Dir are portrayed as his brothers. He is played by Russian actorDanila Kozlovsky.[39][40]
^Gabriel Bie Ravndal (1938).Stories of the East-vikings. Augsburg publishing house. p. 173.Archived from the original on 17 April 2023. Retrieved30 January 2023.
^The earliest and most believable version seems to have been preserved in theNovgorod First Chronicle, which says that Oleg departed "overseas" (i.e., to Scandinavia) and was buried there.
^Miller, Dean (1997). "Threefold death". In Mallory, J. P.; Adams, Douglas Q. (eds.).Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. Taylor & Francis. pp. 577–578.
^The text of the Schechter Letter is given at Golb 106–121. It is cited herein by folio and line (e.g. SL Fol. x:x)
^SL Fol. 2r, 15–16; 17. The author of the letter describes Khazaria as "our land". SL Fol. 1r:19, 2v:15,20.
^No less a personage thanMikhail Artamonov declared the manuscripts' authenticity beyond question. Artamonov 12. Nonetheless, other scholars expressed scepticism about its account, due in large part to its contradiction of the Primary Chronicle.E.g., Gregoire 242–248, 255–266; Dunlop 161.Anatoli Novoseltsev, noting the discrepancy, admits the document's authenticity but declares that the author "displaces the real historical facts rather freely." Novoseltsev 216–218. Brutskus asserted that HLGW was in fact another name for Igor. Brutskus 30–31. Mosin proposed that HLGW was a different person from Oleg and was an independent prince inTmutarakan; the existence of an independent Rus' state in Tmutarakan in the first half of the tenth century is rejected by virtually all modern scholars. Mosin 309–325;cf. Zuckerman 258.
^Zuckerman 257–268. Zuckerman cites,inter alia, to theNovgorod First Chronicle.Cf., e.g., Christian 341–345.
^Pritsak 60–71. Pritsak placed the "lost generation" between Oleg and Igor. Zuckerman dismisses this as "outright speculation"; and places both as contemporaries in the early to mid tenth century.
^Pavel Kokovtsov, when publishing a Russian translation of the letter in 1932, argued that FRS may refer toThrace, where the Rus' forces were defeated by the armies of Lecapenus (onlineArchived 6 May 2007 at theWayback Machine).
Dunlop, D.M.History of the Jewish Khazars. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1954.
Gregoire, H. 'Le "Glozel' khazare."Revue des Études Byzantines 12, 1937.
Golb, Norman andOmeljan Pritsak.Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1982. [Note:as each author was responsible for separate sections of the work, they are referenced separately above.]
Petrukhin V.Ya. "Князь Олег, Хелгу Кембриджского документа и русский княжеский род".Древнейшие государства Восточной Европы. 1998. Памяти А.П. Новосельцева. Moscow, Russian Academy of Sciences, 2000: 222–230.
Pushkin, Alexander.The Song of the Wise Oleg. Leningrad, Aurora Art Publishers, 1991.
Shahmatov, A.A.Ocherk Drevnejshego Perioda Istorii Russkogo Jazyka. Petrograd, 1915 (reprinted Paris 1967).
Zuckerman, Constantine. "On the Date of the Khazar’s Conversion to Judaism and the Chronology of the Kings of the Rus' Oleg andIgor."Revue des Études Byzantines 53 (1995): 237–270.
Shikanov, Vladimir (2010).Византия. Из варяг в греки. Русско-византийские войны IX — XII вв. [Byzantium. From the Varangians to the Greeks. Russo-Byzantine Wars of the 9th - 12th Centuries] (in Russian).ISBN5-8067-0053-4.
Pashuto, Vladimir (1968).Внешняя политика Руси [The foreign policy of Rus'] (in Russian).Moscow: Наука.
